Support NZ Record Stores - Part 3: Flying Out

There's been some excellent news for music lovers this week, in that the easing of Aotearoa's lockdown means "non-essential" postal deliveries will be back in action from Tuesday 28th April. While we're still at least a couple of weeks away from returning to our musical haunts in person, you can keep supporting our local stores by ordering online, and thankfully now won't wait to wait a dogs age to enjoy shiny new wax and / or must-cop merchandise, lovingly packaged and delivered direct to your doorstep.

We've teamed up with the New Zealand Music Commission for a series of features highlighting the crucial work of record stores across the nation, this week spotlighting the street-savvy team at Tāmaki Makaurau's Flying Out. Record Store Day has been postponed from mid-April to Saturday 20th June, but NZMC's Willa Cameron has cooked up a short Q & A for teams across NZ to introduce themselves. Dive into our previous week's features here, and read Online Store Manager Hunter Keane's illuminating and informative answers below.

Flying Out Shop Manager Matthew Crawley (Thee Golden Geese) shared some timely info about their 'Good Sorts' loyalty system: "The Flying Out customer loyalty system is called 'Good Sorts', where basically every dollar is a point, and the more points you stack up, the bigger the discounts you can cash in later. Today just so happens to be Double Points Day at Flying Out, so it’s a good time to become a Good Sort!"

FLYING OUT
https://flyingout.co.nz/

What have been the best releases for you this year?

Hunter Keane: We were just thinking about this! Excitingly our top products are all local releases – we lean into supporting local artists as much as possible so we are particularly proud of this. Avantdale Bowling Clubs LIVE album and the upcoming Split Enz reissue True Colours will be big titles for us. Recently there has been – Nadia Reid Out of My Province, Reb Fountain 'When Gods Lie' 7" and the 40th Anniversary Edition of AK79 which hit stores in January.

Tell me about the best merch for sale right now?

Well yesterday we added the new 'West Auckland' T-Shirt from Cindy. We love Cindy so it's exciting to get some new merch from them. We can't not mention the huge amount of merch we've sold from The Beths. We have a range of T-shirts and crew necks from them which have been selling consistently for over 6 months now. I love that they have kids shirts – which sell just as well.

What's the best cover you've seen lately?

I can't speak for the others but this is probably my favourite recently – The Strokes The New Abnormal. The art is by Jean Michel Basquiat who I studied in high school – super excited to see it in the flesh when we finally open back up. The Mystery Kindaichi Band's The Adventures Of Kohsuke Kindaichi is definitely an honourable mention [I bought it for the cover alone – Ed.].

Do you love this work? Why?

Well this could be an essay! The main reason for me is that you get to meet the most incredible people – this year alone we met Ty Segall, Jay Som, The Schizophonics, Moon Duo and Allah Lahs. Even working with some of Aotearoa's top dogs is exciting for me.

Shine a light on your team! Let us know some insider info.

I learn new things about the team every day – (Matthew) Crawley especially seems to have a ton of stories about working with some of my favourite artists that I'm yet to hear about! I think something that only comes out in the workplace is our guilty pleasures when it comes to music. We each have our own little niche of genres that we know a tonne about but don't advertise. We keep them mostly to ourselves but every now and then it comes out. I don't want to throw anyone to the wolves though so i'll just say – we all love Flying Nun!

NZ Music Commission are calling for all landlords of music venues to give urgent rent relief to their live music tenants here.